Analysis of the Continental Army, the Oneida People and Thomas Hutchinson

Posterity chooses to view the American Revolution in a different light than many revolutionaries experienced it, for history is often mutable at the founding of a country. As revolutionary ideals blossomed, certain people were rejected from the pages of history. Many of them fought and bled for America, and one penned a history of his colony, but none were given historical shares of American independence. They were rejected from posterity’s heroic, romantic play of the American Revolution because their historical truths could not be cast—they created another play altogether. The following is an analysis of the Continental Army, the Oneida people and of Thomas Hutchinson— each was rejected from an idealist’s view of the American Revolution.

The Continental Army was essential to the American Republic’s literal translation into fact. In his A Revolutionary People at War, Charles Royster finds a discrepancy, “between the ideals espoused during the revolution” and revolutionary soldiers’ experiences . While the revolution’s “ideals of achievement were rigorous, even absolute,” they did not mesh with experience. Many average people traded with the enemy just to line their personal pockets . From the very beginning, many Americans justifiably looked out for their own self-interest; they wanted to prevent the future Continental Army from encroaching upon their newfound freedom . Military dictatorships formed out of rebellion often lead to encroachment upon freedoms, and the American public wanted to nip this possibility in the bud. At the same time, a Rage Militaire, “as the French call a passion for arms,” took rampant possession of the newly forming Continental Army. These soldiers, fresh with united religious determination, were “w...

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...ly slandered. He was rejected from posterity’s account of heroism because Americans needed a villain, for it is much easier to hate a person than an idea.

Each group or person was subsumed under American revolutionary ideals. Judgments concerning them may alter our perceptions, but not our history. It is as necessary to reconcile their achievements and their losses as it would be to consider traditional revolutionary heroes. They represent an issue within current historical interpretation that has been remediated in recent times, that as time slowly ebbs away, more objective views spring of and from each. We can create a new play without political baggage weighing us down, which includes revolutionary soldiers, the Oneida, and Thomas Hutchinson, but does not diminish any sense of the grandeur of the Revolutionary War. We are beginning to reach that point.